Loading...

Clarity

Carol Sanford

Greater Seattle Area

CEO The Responsible Entrepreneur Institute, 38 years of co-leading business change with great entrepreneurs and business leaders, Author of multi-award winning best selling book, The Responsible Business (30 case studies of my collaborations), The Responsible Entrepreneur (stories of 12 entrepreneurs who are game changers using very successful businesses). Winter 2014, We teach entrepreneurs how to build a powerful business platform from which to make a big difference.

Answers

I just spoke at Net Impact to 100 millennials, on a panel called the Future of Leadership. We filmed it so it will be up soon on my site. my message: I have been leading large scale change for 40 years. I am an Elder in the field.

I see three eras. First is the machine era, where humans and nature were treated like interchangeable parts in a machine.That was spawned by the industrial revolution. Then can the Behavioral era, where humans were treated as living, but manipulatable by incentives, rewards and recognition, mostly by people with power over them (Thanks to John Watson and his study of rates, . Both of these are based on belief in external motivation.

In the last decade or maybe two, we have what might be called the connection era. Everything is connected to everything else and affects it all. This led us to do more involving of humans in work and treating them as having a brain.

What has been underground for half a century and now surfacing more fully is a living systems view of leadership (the behavioral and human potential approaches tend to drop out other life) both internally and externally in influencing change. It sees humans as fully able to be self-directed, self-correcting and self-managing with roles, that were supervisory becoming one of being resources to individuals and teams. People are connected directly to stakeholders and serving them what I call "promises beyond ableness". They promise to do something that will benefit the life of specific customer nodes, Earth in some specific way, communities and as a result, investors. It is all tied to a living strategic direction based on The Responsible Business approach. I have helped collaborative with leaders, design and lead such for four decades and am thrilled to see it become more mainstream, such as at Google. I tell stories of our work in The Responsible Business: Reimagining Sustainability and Success. With 30 case studies of Fortune 100 companies and new economy businesses (my collaborators, changing their industries. My new book, The Responsible Entrepreneur: Four Game Changing Archetypes for Founders, Leaders and Investors (out in 2014) and more stories including from Google, Eileen Fisher and other game changing companies can be found at www.ResponsibleTrep.com. You can take a quiz and learn what archetype you lean on (and how to branch out), get a free twice monthly newsletter and be notified when the new book is out. And buy the current one through a link.

I love this conversation. It really matters. I feel real hope with the new leaders and entrepreneurs. They care more deeply, risk more courageously and bring conscience to their ventures.

Reviews

I worked with Carol briefly while she was engaged as a consultant at Merck. I found Carol to be intelligent, interesting, perceptive, seasoned, and doing work that is quite unique. In particular, I think her level of understanding and experience working on culture and change to be very insightful and it has hung with me for a number of years. I am happy to endorse Carol.

I attended a program facilitated by Carol and her team that is one of the most remarkable experiences I have had. It opened my eyes to a very different perspective of leadership and thinking about things much more strategically. I use the tools and principles every day and am confident that I would not have been as successful in my subsequent endeavors had I not participated in this program. Carol was great with following up to check on my success and answering my questions to this day. I would hghly Carol and look forward to working with her in the future.

I've had the privilege of knowing Carol for over two years now and am continually amazed at her ability to help others reach new levels of growth, both personally and professionally.

Carol's approach to her work is unlike any I've encountered before--it's direct, intense, revealing, and culminates in deepened consciousness and ableness. Her commitment to learning is just so wonderfully contagious!

The development and work I've experienced with Carol is with me still and a continued source of new insights. I'm looking forward to our next journey of education, revelation and, well, fun!

Carol is the very best, most valuable and most effective resource for any company intent on finding its true and valuable business. Her work build a company's capacity (strategy, process, structure, skills, etc.) for not just carrying out its business with great effectiveness, but in doing so, continuously adding great value and regeneration to all its stakeholders, its marketplace, and its industry. The work achieves the above with the advanced understanding of corporate responsibility that really makes a significant difference.

I met Carol in 2000 she when was brought in to do a team workshop at SGI. She is a highly energetic person, and a provocative and creative thinker who brings both a fresh perspective and a practical approach to her consulting. She is one of a very few educators with whom I would choose to work in continuing to develop my own personal awareness, and to deepen my understanding of both the people who work within corporate environments and the inner-workings of organizations as a whole. She's a great person and a seasoned educator, who is extremely skilled in helping people to identify their next developmental steps.

Carol Sanford has been the greatest inspiration in my professional career. I have successfully incorporated the systems she taught, into all aspects of my business and management career and across companies. She has given me new ways of approaching business and personnel problems and made me a better manager. Carol's concepts are so fundamental to what it takes to be truly successful and sustainable, that once you've "seen" Carol's vision, you suddenly find that they can be applied to almost any situation. Carol teachs us to think more wholistically than just within our short term business needs and by doing so, is helping grow stronger communities and individuals as well as successful businesses.

Carol's work is so critical to shifting the current ways we see ourselves and the businesses we run, framing it in the much larger context of the earth and how we live, that it is hard to write a brief description that fully captures the value she brings to the table. She knows how to move the discussion beyond the mundane short term and with the heart of a visionary, shows us how to see the truest meaning of our efforts and how to master the power of that to see, not only the long-term - but the much broader effects of our decisions and their impacts. She has forever changed the way I approach my work and helped my develop my own insights into why I do the work I do - why it is important, and where I want to go with it in the future.

The challenges we face, economically, socially, environmentally, can appear overwhelming. With Carol's approach, it is easy to find the ways where movement and change are possible. I believe that her work is groundbreaking in many ways and that any company or organization that finds itself stuck or overwhelmed when faced with the huge global changes taking place, needs to invite her into their strategic discussion.

When I knew that buzz words, templates, "best practices" and an emphasis on measuring small, trailing aspects of a business were bad ideas that hurt a company's chance of success and ruled out greatness - but I did not know why - Carol explained it to me and it changed the way I saw things at a profound level making success I never imagined (in my personal and professional life) possible. Carol has the power and the deep experience to turn foggy, tentative organizations into clear, striding and inspiring enterprises. Carol's record belies the belief that you necessarily need new leaders or new people to get amazing results. Above all, Carol is a systems thinker who can and will work on a whole organization in about the same time that a typical consultant will take to work on one piece. Anyone building something for the long run with a true interest in serving their community of shareholders should talk to, listen to and work with Carol any chance they get.

Quite simply put, Carol Sanford is the most inspiring, forward-thinking and "evolved" business leader and resource that I have ever had the privilege of working and growing with! I have experience in the the Public, NFP, and Entrepreneurial arenas and have been a student of business for over twenty years. I have never encountered someone with Carol's advanced understanding of the latent potential of humans in enterprise and the means to help actualize that potential. If you are serious about change, in yourself, your thinking, your organization and the larger systems to which you are in service...Congratulations, you have found a very special person to help you with what is next...

Carol Sanford is an accomplished consultant and teacher who engages fully with her clients to achieve revolutionary business results. With deep wisdom and good humor, Carol is relentless in her drive to develop the capabilities of her client systems so that they can transform the way they approach business problems and opportunities. Working with Carol results in positive, sustainable change.

Talking about Carol Sanford is talking about Consciousness, Coherence and Trust. I have had the great pleasure of knowing Carol as she was a Consultant during Colgate Palmolive’s implementation of a new work philosophy called “High Commitment Work Systems” and, during the years of our acquaintance, I have known Carol in many capacities. She was extremely insightful and dependable. The way she communicated, explained or simply talked was so clear and pragmatic that even the most illiterate worker could grab the full sense and content of her speech. She was much more than simply a Consultant; she became a friend. Carol Sanford is, in one word, Unique!